


And then we'll start again

by mliz18



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fix-It, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Past Abuse, Season 8, anti daenerys (sorry)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2020-05-13 09:27:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19248403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mliz18/pseuds/mliz18
Summary: "Jon is their king. Jon is her king. But Jon left her alone in this place with her painful memories and something wearing Bran’s skin, and even though Jon gave her back her home and swore to always keep her safe she curses him everyday for going south, hurt and anger coiling deep and spiteful in her belly."This is my love letter to Sansa.





	1. Sansa

**Author's Note:**

> I'll probably edit this before posting more chapters but I've been working on this for a while and wanted to gage people's reactions before posting more. Let me know what you think!

SANSA

Sometimes Sansa wakes from sleep with her dreams still clinging to her skin like frost dusting a windowpane. Safe in her bed at Winterfell she starts awake, thinking she’s still in her gilded cage in the Red Keep or screaming in her and Ramsay’s marriage bed. It takes a moment to calm the stutter of her heart in her breast as she shakes off the ghosts whispering in her ears, but she is no longer a little dove curled in a lion’s paw or a piece of flesh wrung through a madman’s hands. She is home.

It was not an easy homecoming. Sansa had to scrub clean each room of the castle before the feeling of Ramsay’s hands on her skin and his hot breath in her ear started to fade, and sometimes she thinks that his cruel laugh is too meshed into the cold grey stone for her to ever be truly free. Jon gently insisted that she take the Lord’s chambers because he knew she couldn’t bear to set foot in her childhood room again. It took days for her to even be able to walk past it without her limbs locking in place, but the stones of her parents’ chambers stack around her like armor. A phoenix rising from smoldering ash, she does not crumble.

She works to repair the castle from the damage inflicted by the Boltons, the pretenders who dared to grasp at her ancestral seat, who infested her home and stripped it bare. Her men slowly repair the ruined ramparts and the broken gates but all reminders of a once happy home have been stolen away.

Sansa placates the angry rustlings of the bannermen that wash in and out of Winterfell like the tide. One full tidal moon swept them back in holding Jon’s crown aloft, held out freely along with their love and respect that he had lost as he turned his eyes toward the isle of dragonglass. She turned them down gently, reminding them of their King’s loyalty, loyalty to the proud fir trees and the curved black boughs that cast shadows over the snow-dappled ground, to the lakes frozen to sheets of mirrored ice, to the clean and crisp northern air. Jon is their king. Jon is _her_ king. But Jon left her alone in this place with her painful memories and _something_ wearing Bran’s skin, and even though Jon helped her take back their home and swore to always keep her safe she curses him everyday for going south, hurt and anger coiling deep and spiteful in her belly. She had tried to warn him that he needed to be smarter than Robb, smarter than Father. He did not heed her words.

So she waits. Sansa fills her time doing the work her younger self would have recoiled from. She helps prep food in the kitchens, ties up her skirts to harvest their meager crops, tends to patients in the infirmary, watches Brienne train the soldiers. She learns her people, their names and stories and their hopes and dreams. She finds her days full and her body blessedly tired at the break of dusk. There is no time to miss Jon.

 

 

The Dragon Queen is as beautiful as the rumors whispered. Sansa is no Varys but she has her own little birds who sang her songs of skeins of silver hair strung with bells and violet eyes bending men to her will. The queen is as beautiful as her little birds sing, but her beauty is that of a wildfire, something to be feared and not coveted. There is something unhinged about Daenerys Targaryen and the first sight of her is enough to prick the hairs on the back of Sansa’s neck. Sansa can see something shining in her eyes, something feverish and frantic lying behind the beautiful violet. Sansa has seen eyes shine like that before. Her breath burns ice cold in the valley of her ribs, blood screaming in the face of danger. _Something is wrong, something is broken. Run child, run._

The queen simpers to her when she is introduced and Sansa has to swallow her disdain, distantly thinking to herself that Daenerys would not have fared well in Lannister court where courtesies were armor and words weapons, where to not play a role believably could spell ruin. Jon’s face is outwardly calm but his eyes are pleading with her, so Sansa bites the inside of her cheek hard enough that blood, hot and metallic, spills over her tongue. Jon brought this woman to the North, to their home, so Sansa honors the guest right. She will deal with Jon later.

“Winterfell is yours, your Grace”. Daenerys’s summer smile wilts at the bite of ice in Sansa’s eyes. The dragon queen is someone her younger self would have revered - beautiful, powerful, molding the world in shape of her desires - but Sansa is no longer a little dove and there is more to ruling than beauty. Large dragons and lovely eyes do not make a good leader. Sansa can see how much it pains the queen to ingratiate herself rather than take what she wanted with fire and blood. An entire ancestry of conquest runs through her Targaryen veins, ancestry whispering that the world is hers by right, ripe and ready for the taking. Sansa will honor the guest right, but her trust is not so easily won.

Jon starts toward her as if to take her in his arms, but she freezes him in place with a single look. Nevermind that her hands are aching to reach out to him, to draw him close to her side to remain there for all their days, she has not forgotten and she has yet to forgive.

“You must be tired from your journey, your Grace, allow me to show you to your chambers.” Sansa says, crisp as autumn air, as she takes the queen’s arm and turns her back on Jon, steeling herself against the misery written with all his features. He will learn what it feels like to wait.

She delays the inevitable, ensuring the queen is settled comfortably and attempting to organize the encampment for the staggeringly large army swarming the castle grounds. Jon watches her from the ramparts, black striking against the clouded blue of the sky. She refuses to meet his gaze but she can feel his sitting squarely between the bones of her shoulders. Worry gnaws at her belly as she counts out food stores in her head, trying to ration their hard-won food among thousands of new mouths. Too many hours later and with an aching head she reluctantly, stiffly, invites her brother to her solar.

 

 

“You need to trust me.” They are barely over the threshold when the plea rushes out of his mouth. She scoffs.

“As you trusted me with your plans? No word for moons and then suddenly we hear you’ve cast off your crown and bedded a Targaryen.” He winces, and guilt begins to creep its sharp fingers up her throat but Sansa will not soften.

“Everything I have done, I’ve done for this family.” Family. That word cuts right to the quick of her anger and exposes it like a raw nerve, a weeping wound not yet healed over.

“You LEFT this family!” She nearly screams, half-wild, “You left the North, you left Winterfell, you left _me_ -” She breaks off, chest heaving as she leans against her desk, and Jon’s sharp intake of breath seems to cleave the air between them. “I needed you, and you left me. Bran’s body came back with something _else_ living in it, speaking with his voice. Littlefinger almost destroyed Arya and I with his whispers and she _slit his throat_ in the Great Hall. I have to placate your lords and bannermen who feel abandoned too, they tell me everyday that you’ve left us behind and I almost started to believe it. I’m tired, Jon. I am so, _so_ tired.”

His eyes are guarded, and regret rises in her chest. She’s half-moved to give in, to soothe away his furrowed brow with her fingertips and whisper that none of it matters. He seems inclined to do the same as he reaches across the desk for her hands, but she speaks her last hurt.  

“You left this family, and you came back as her family.” There is a moment of heavy silence where they just look at each other, struggling to find a way to stitch shut the gulf that time and distance had opened between them. Jon runs a hand over his weary face.

“I am sorry for leaving you, truly. Every day apart from here, every step that took me further from your side, it all felt wrong. I would lay in my bed on Dragonstone when dreams wouldn’t come and think about you, about the Arya and Bran I had yet to meet. And when I did dream, it was always of you. I was tearing myself in two but I didn’t know what else to do.” Her heart flips in her chest and she scolds it, tamps it down, pats it back into place. _Brother, brother, brother._ “I should not have left you, but you’ve done a better job than I ever could have as ruler in the North. They listen to you, respect you, love you. You must know that.”

She sighs. “They will love me less when the queen feasts with us tonight. Honestly, Jon, what were you thinking, bringing her to our doorstep? We need her dragonfire, it’s true. The dead creep closer and I will take any solution to protect our people, but there’s something about her I do not trust.” The miserable look on his face tells her that perhaps he does know what he’s done, knows the lines that he’s crossed, the insidious threat he’s allowed to slither into their home. She takes a deep breath.

“Did you bend the knee to protect the North, or because you love her?” The question hangs in the air between them and for a moment it feels like they’re both holding their breath, balancing on the edge of the precipice.

“Have you no faith in me at all?” The ugly rage swirling and twisting in Sansa’s chest stills. She looks at him, his twilight-dark eyes and thick black curls. Her Jon, as dear to her as her own heart.

“You know I do.” She allows her voice to soften and she can see some of the tension leave Jon’s body. A beat passes, but Jon was never as talented as her at schooling his features and the fierce pride that flares in his eyes is almost enough for her to forgive him.

“You told me I had to be smarter than Robb, smarter than Father. And aye, _I know_ they would never bend the knee to a foreigner but _neither did I._ ”

She blinks at him slowly until it dawns on her.

Oh Jon, her Jon. She slips her hands into his, feels his calluses brush against her palms. Warm, solid, steady.

“The pack survives.” She whispers. He squeezes her fingers.

“Yes, sister. Our pack survives.”


	2. Chapter 2

SANSA

The queen speaks to the North as she would her sun-drenched stretch of Essos, but she speaks with ownership, and Sansa does not miss the way the queen drinks in Winterfell with a victor’s greed. Daenerys’s gaze misses the sullen faces and wary looks. The lords do not take to her upon meeting, and Sansa has to fill an uneasy silence after the queen’s speech with a toast the woman does not deserve. It turns her stomach to raise her cup to a conqueror but Sansa’s duty is to her people and her people need the queen’s protection.

She can recognize in the queen the desperate need to be loved and admired as Daenerys laps up Sansa’s honeyed words. She sits in Sansa’s lady mother’s chair as if she belongs there, clutching the rosewood lovingly carved into bending riverbeds and sleek scales by her father. Her smile grows wider with Sansa’s every word until it threatens to split her lovely face in two. She watches the lords start to ease slightly under the spell of her lavish praise of Daenerys Stormborn, Breaker of Chains. They bow and mutter the right words but Sansa sees the way they hold their breath when the queen speaks.

The lords begin to murmur among themselves as the food is served, sneaking furtive glances at the queen as if looking at her directly would spark her dragonfire alight. Bran is ever silent and Arya has snuck off with the blacksmith she favors, so Sansa is left to sup with Jon and Daenerys alone. Daenerys showers her with compliments and pretty words as if they are two high ladies sewing silks and trading gossip among the southern gardens, rather than two leaders locked in a stalemate with a man they both love sat firmly between them. Sansa returns her compliments in kind, speaking to this queen as she once spoke to another. Her replies are short but sweet as summer, freely offered while giving nothing. She watches the hand the queen places on Jon’s thigh, and that act of possession, that simple suggestion of intimacy freshly forged, turns Sansa’s breath to ash in her chest. Her fingers tighten around her cup until her knuckles feel close to splintering around the metal. She leans toward the queen, asking her leave and murmuring an excuse about evening prayers in the godswood. When she stands to walk smoothly but quickly as possible from the hall, she catches glimpse of the lords rising to their feet in respect. She keeps walking but also catches in the corner of her eye Daenerys’s smile sliding off her face.  


 

Daenerys takes a keen interest in Ghost during her first few weeks in the North, likely wanting to bond with Jon’s companion as he has reportedly bonded with her children, but he refuses to approach her until Jon all but drags him to her side at supper one evening. Ghost’s instant dislike of the queen gives Sansa a shamefully childish sense of satisfaction, but she can’t find it in herself to care, especially when Ghost leaves the queen’s side for Sansa the moment he spots her. He curls through her legs under the table and rests his heavy head in her lap as she runs her fingers through the thick fur around his neck, swallowing a smile at the blatant disappointment the queen doesn’t bother to cover.

“I regret that I had never heard of direwolves before reaching Westeros.” the dragon queen muses. “Dragons are ruthlessness and magic, a true representation of House Targaryen. What is the wolf’s nature?” She’s addressing Jon but it is Sansa who answers.

“Your dragons are surely might made flesh” Sansa says softly, “But wolves are fierce and patient, and desperately loyal to their blood, their pack. Loyal to the very last.” Jon is watching her as they bask in the glow of the hearth, and it seems as if he’s drinking her in as the fire paints his curls in molten gold. She can almost taste the hunger on his lips as it coats her own, thick and sweet. She can feel Ghost’s fur prickle under her fingers as Jon stiffens. _Brother, brother, brother_. Even as this warning runs through her mind she cannot bring herself to turn away. The look they share does not go unnoticed.

“Loyal to the very last, you say.” the queen says coolly, her voice high and clear and out of place among the heavy stones and solid oak. She places her hand on Jon’s arm. “Good. My wolf will serve me well in the capital then, as a _loyal_ advisor.”

 _My wolf_. Sansa bristles at the blinding adoration in the smile the queen gives Jon, but the barely concealed shudder that runs up the length of Jon’s spine tempers her anger. The queen speaks of wolves as of pet hounds, docile and domesticated. She would have Jon play his role as a puppet consort, a dog in the capital to bring the north to heel. Sansa gives the queen a sun-warm smile and her reply is sweet as a birdsong.  
“Wolves do not fare so well in the South, your Grace, and as Warden of the North Jon would better serve the Crown _from_ the North. Do you not agree?”  _He is mine. He is ours. You will not have him._

She returns the gentle, grateful pressure of Jon’s fingers under the table, and pretends she doesn’t see the hard set of Daenerys’s mouth. Let the queen think that she is a doe, knock-kneed and gentle, a delicate and demure girl who bends in awe of her might. Sansa is no doe, she is not prey. She is the wolf that stalks the ancient forests, a sentinel that watches and waits.

 

 

She finds herself giving every excuse to avoid the dragon queen’s company. Daenerys watches too closely, prodding her clumsily with questions about Jon and the nature of their kinship, Sansa’s past marriages, her desires once the queen sits on the Iron Throne. It is tiring to slip back into the role of the little dove when everything in Sansa’s being is screaming at her to seize the queen by the neck and throw her out of her home. It is tiring to be questioned about Jon, it brings up the hazy feelings deep inside of her that Sansa does not let see the light, does not give names to. _Brother, brother, brother_. A brother who loves her as a brother should, truly and honorably. It is tiring, but the dead march south, so Sansa barters her pride for dragonfire.

 _Soon_ , she promises herself, _soon I will sink my teeth in. How sweet it will be, to taste her fear as I open her throat. Let her see that no one hurts my pack._

Even as she thinks these thoughts, she knows better. Sansa is not her wild little sister. She does not handle a blade like an extra limb. It would be so much simpler to let the Valyrian steel sing across the Targaryen woman’s throat, but Sansa knows herself better than that. She cannot handle a blade, but still she must protect her pack. Her blade is her tongue, her silvertongue spinning beautiful webs, sharp and sweet. She will make sure that Jon’s queen can’t untangle the Lady of Winterfell. Her courtesies are perfect and unfailingly polite, but sometimes she lets the queen see the curl of her fangs. Let Daenerys Targaryen see that the hour of the wolf is upon them.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jon's POV disappeared after season 7 so I gave him one here (this is just a quick intro to Jon's feelings since we didn't get to see that much, there will be more action and dialogue later:)
> 
> P.S. thank you so much for your comments on the first two chapters! I hope you continue to enjoy the story

JON

When he sees the distant ramparts of Winterfell break over the hills, Jon’s heart starts to quicken in his chest. They’re too far away to see anything more than the grey outline of the keep, but he finds himself straining his eyes for a flash of red like a siren call, a beacon to guide him home. He can’t see her but he can feel that she’s watching them approach, straining out through the thin morning fog to spot him as he is her. _Sansa Sansa Sansa._ Her name becomes a chant becomes a song, joining the low and steady beat of their mounts’ hooves and the shrill ring of metal against metal.

“What is she like, your sister?” Daenerys has asked him this many times over the long journey North but he hasn’t found himself able to answer, and she can sense his tension now as he shifts impatiently in his saddle. "Tyrion described the quiet girl to whom he was once wed, but many years have passed and she's a woman grown now." Jon, still craning his neck to watch Winterfell grow over the horizon, does not respond. 

“You don’t speak of her often,” she continues, “are you not close?”

Close. Jon mulls the word over, turning it around and around in his mouth and finds that it doesn’t quite fit. There is no perfect word for what he and Sansa are. His sister, his confidant, the person he trusts most in this world. Eight thousand years of the wolf blood of the Starks pumps through their veins, binding him to her and her to him. No one word can encompass her importance, can give proper gravity to her presence. No, they are not close, they are something more. But to voice this would be to voice the thoughts no honorable brother should harbor. Shameful, sinful thoughts.  _Sister, sister, sister._

“We were not raised closely as children,” he offers reluctantly, “but when we found our way back to each other, what we experienced together bonded us in a way that shared parentage cannot.”

He thinks for a moment the queen dislikes his answer as she stares back at him intently, dislikes the idea of someone bonded to him in a way that she cannot be. But she nods and then asks him about houses and traditions, questions that must feel safer than the wild sister he seems to hide away in Winterfell.

The faint hope Jon had for a warm reunion is dashed the moment they enter the gates. Sansa is wearing the face of the Lady of Winterfell, cordial but distant. When he introduces the queen the first words out of Daenerys’s mouth are hollow and flattering, and for a moment the barest smirk flits over his sister’s face as if she’s baring her teeth in warning. _You do not belong, your false words hold no weight here._ Her eyes meet his and Jon is silently begging, pleading with her to trust him, but his fears are unfounded. Sansa is her lady mother’s daughter, and she welcomes the queen with grace. He moves to embrace her, desperate for her touch to ground him, to steady him as she always has. He is rebuffed with a single look, the ice in her eyes chilling his blood as she makes her displeasure clear. As he waits for Sansa to settle the queen into her chambers and organize the army, he hears an Unsullied soldier call her cold.  

 

 

Jon can sense the subtle shift in the lords’ allegiance upon his return. They don’t look to him for orders or decisions as they once did, their lips pressing together in taut and angry lines every time he speaks. He hears the whispers, angry whispers spat through clenched teeth that he had come back tainted by the south, a pet dog, a puppet consort to a tyrant. If Jon were not wracked by guilt for leaving the north it would almost be a relief. He had never wanted to wear the ruler’s mantle, and the more he watches Sansa run the castle it becomes clear that it suits her shoulders her more truly than it ever suited his. Her lady mother moving, flesh once again, through the castle by way of Sansa’s steps, with all their Father’s honor and Sansa’s own wisdom.

A shield-maiden of old, Sansa leads Winterfell with grace and a quiet strength, a fierce resilience that the lords cling to. They flit to her like flies to honey, moths to the bright flame of her hair, hard-eyed and re-faced northmen looking to her as they did Father. She moves them delicately as bone chips on a board, spins her beautiful words into their dutiful silence. When Jon speaks, they rise up to match his words with anger, indignation. Only Sansa can call them to heel, and it is to her that they are deeply, fiercely loyal. The Dragon Queen watches with furrowed brows because she hasn’t found that love in the North. No one on this side of the Narrow Sea speaks of her with the same shining pride coating their words, and the wild burn of jealousy in her eyes sets Jon’s teeth on edge.

Sansa meets her cool gazes with smiles bright as her hair, but she doesn’t always hide the bite of the ice in her eyes, glistening blue ice that hisses _you do not belong here, you are not of the North, you are not part of my pack._ Sometimes Jon wants to grasp her by the shoulders and shake her until she understands the danger the queen is. But he knows Sansa sees the danger better than he, he who brought the dragon to their doorstop.

Daenerys must have been good once, and even now when the madness starts to swell within her Jon can still see the shadow of the hopeful girl she was. He can see the world she might have built, the woman she could’ve become. In the wake of the shame that rose after he lay with the queen, he told himself that in time he could come to love her. Jon had desperately wanted to believe in the woman the rest of her followers did, the woman who wanted to break the wheel. He could have loved that woman, he knows, but the world is cold and cruel and she has paid the price for its malice. He starts thinking dangerous thoughts, dangerous but tantalizing thoughts of another queen to lead them through the bleak and barren winter ahead. A queen who acts according to duty, not prophecy or fragile notions of destiny. The dragon queen is like a cache of wildfire, delicate and volatile. The wrong touch, any slight slip of the tongue, could burn them all to ash. The dead march south and Jon cannot bring himself to regret seeking her dragonfire, but he's welcomed danger to their hearth. Her talk of being owed respect sits leaden in his stomach as he thinks of another queen, one who does not have to demand respect because she works to earn it.

 


	4. Chapter 4

JON

The evenings spent in Sansa’s solar, shut away from the lords and the snows, from the Dragon Queen vying for his attentions and her advisors, is the time when Jon can let the tension slip from his shoulders with a single, weary sigh. He sits in the rosewood chair by her hearth and watches Arya make faces at Ghost while they sip honeyed wine. Bran speaks his polished words, slow and even, telling of past kings and ancient empires. The white winds blow shrill against the glass of the window panes but the room is snug and warm, and Jon finds himself wishing they just could exist like this, no wars to fight and no queens to pacify. Sansa’s hair glows a bright copper in the light of the flames as she rustles through scrolls and records, and Jon knows she won’t put down her quill until the late hours of the night, until the call of sleep is too strong. She bites her lip now and again, a vestige of her girlhood that the Septas failed to rid her of. Silk-soft skin gives way to teeth and leaves her lips flushed rosebuds, and Jon tells himself the drink is what warms his belly so. _Sister, sister, sister._

He tries to push one sister out of his head by spending time with another. The reserved Arya he reunited with is not the wolf-wild little girl he bid farewell to all those long years ago. Light-footed, she slips silently through the castle, her streaking shadow the only proof she had passed. The grey eyes that once shone like polished river stones are harder, and there is a gracefulness to her even when still. Even as changed as they are, they start to find their way back to each other through steel and its dance.

Her fighting unnerves him. She fights like she already knows where each stroke will fall, and there is a deadly intent in every movement. When they spar it’s another reminder of all that Jon does not yet know. She refuses to tell him what happened to her, what made her into what she is, and underneath the defiance there is warring shame and pride.

“She will tell you,” Sansa replies, maddeningly, when he asks. “She just needs to trust you first.”

He’s hurt at first by her lack of trust, but Jon can see in Arya something the last Starks all have in common - desperate longing for family. Whatever befell Arya after Ned Stark's death, it’s ugly enough for her to believe that her brother would recoil from her. But Jon knows the complicated nature of survival and its cruel demands better than most, so he works to gain her trust, bit by bit, with each stroke of steel.

 

 

The horns blow their dreaded call as Jon and Daenerys stand toe to toe, her chest heaving and the air thick and heavy with discontent. Had they not been down in the crypt away from her children, Jon has no doubt she would burn him to ash, kin or not. Her fury turns to fear as the horns sound, but as she reaches for his hand Jon is already turning away. There is precious little time for goodbyes but he runs to the ramparts, weaving through trembling armor-cloaked men and wailing children. His sisters stand straight-backed and hand in hand, spines rigid as they stare out into the murky darkness. His call to them dies a strangled gasp in his throat but they turn at his footsteps. Their faces are smooth masks, but something in Sansa’s breaks as he quickly pulls Arya into his arms. As he holds her tightly, he and Sansa’s eyes meet.

“You will come back.” She says softly. Not a plea, not a question, an order. He releases Arya and steps toward Sansa. Gently, more gently than the urgency of the moment demands, he cups her face, skin chilled by the dusting of snow.

“I will fight and claw and bite my way through,” he swears, voice low and almost a growl. “I will not leave you again.” Her hands are clinging to his as he cups her face, and when she leans into the kiss he presses to her forehead he can feel her trembling.

“Be safe, both of you.” He orders and turns on his heel to join the men.

 

It is brutal, the long clawing fight through the writhing mountains of bodies. It is hard to tell where the dead end and the living begin, as the Night King’s snow blinds them and their fallen comrades rise again with blue eyes. It becomes clear that skill with a sword does not matter, experience does not matter. Jon loses track of time, the fighting seems to last for days, weeks, and there are moments when he thinks that they might never see dawn break again. Finally, as Viserion looms over him, frost-blue ice gathering in the back of his throat, Jon closes his eyes. _I’m so sorry, Sansa._ He braces himself for the cold bite of the dragon's fire, but there is nothing.

 

As the all-clear is given as a gentle dawn breaks over the ruined ramparts after the Long Night, Jon hears Sansa’s voice ringing out through the castle. It cuts through the wailing of grief and injured soldiers and he barely turns in time to catch her as she crashes herself into him. She whispers his name over and over as they cling desperately to one another, her fingers wound through his curls. The blood and the horror fade away as the juniper scent of her hair washes over him, and he presses his forehead to hers as they both make silent promises. He hears Arya call to them through the chaos as she wheels Bran with her and they hold them close to their chests as their pack sinks to the ground, alive.

 

She coaxes him, gentle as the Mother, to her chambers and bids one of her maids to draw a bath. She ignores his protests as she peels off his armor and layers of mud and blood-caked clothing, averting her eyes while he slips beneath the blessedly hot water.

“Your men are being attended to as we speak,” she soothes, “and in a moment I will go tend to them myself. But let me do this for you now.” She starts to massage the lather into his hair and as much as he wants to protest, his muscles weaken under her touch and he sinks lower into the water with a low groan. Her fingers are a holy balm to his aching body, like honey sliding over the tongue, soothing and rich. But even as she rinses the blood and muck from his skin he can still hear the wail of the dead shrill in his ears, fingernails scraping over ice.

Once she finishes washing his body clean of the horrors still ringing through his head she goes to fetch and sterilize a needle in the fire of her hearth.

“Stitching up flesh is not quite the same as stitching your pretty dresses.” He jests with a half-hearted shadow of a smile as she glides back to his side. 

She settles beside the bath with her needle. “I had plenty of practice, married to Ramsay” she says softly. Jon’s throat wells up with guilt as she waves away his apology. He reaches out bandaged hand to cup the curve of her cheek softly, skimming his thumb lightly over the knife-sharp tilt of her cheekbone. Her skin is soft as a petal underneath his war-calloused fingertips.

“No man will ever touch you again,” he swears solemnly, “not unless you wish them to, not as long as I live. I swear it.” She breathes in his vow as she presses her cheek further into his palm, but Jon does not like the look in her eye, a cornered animal with nowhere to run. He has to prompt her twice to get an answer.

“Your queen bids me to marry.” Jon’s breath stops.

“Who?” It isn’t so much a question as a snarl that rips through his teeth.

“One of her advisors, I would think, or a southern lord who bends the knee. She knows I will hold the North if she brings you south to the capital.”

“No.”

“I want an independent North, I do. But seeing how the dead ravaged our men, how so few of them managed to claw free and drag themselves back to us, I don’t know if I could bear to send them into battle again. If this saves them, how could I refuse?”

“No.” But his voice comes softer, a plea rather than a denial.

“I am the Lady of Winterfell,” Sansa’s smile is weak and shaking, “it is my duty to our people to make an advantageous match.”

“You fulfill your duty to our people every day with every breath you draw, with every word, every action.” He grips her hands. “You need not give them this.”

She doesn’t respond, but Jon can see his words sliding off her like snow melt dripping from the castle walls. She continues her stitching, but he can feel her hands trembling against his skin.

 

Winterfell drinks with a feverish abandon, anxious to forget that death itself had marched on their doorstep. Jon can feel the leaden weight of Daenerys’s gaze sitting firmly between his shoulders, so he looks everywhere else in the room aside from her, ignoring the guilt that creeps up his throat. She has lost as much as any of them, but their last confrontation weighs heavy on his shoulders. He turns instead to where Sansa had been sitting, but finds instead an empty chair and an abandoned cup. He spots the bright bloom of her hair as she weaves through the celebrating crowd, greeting lords and soldiers alike. They all look at her with shining eyes, adoration and pride coating their every word. It was her they fought for, not a foreign queen and her dragons. They fought for the North, and Jon can feel Daenerys’s resentment even as he avoids her gaze.

There is a pull to her, deep and ancient call that rouses response from all around her. Jon can see it in the way Sandor Clegane watches, eyes heavy upon her like a winter cloak. He can see it in the way Tyrion Lannister shadows her as she moves through the castle, offering counsel and comfort whenever she might need it. He can see it now in the way the lords and soldiers drink in her earnest praise, flushing as knock kneed boys before their Lady. He recognizes the thirst in these men as it coats his own tongue and that alone is enough for his hand to twitch towards his sword. 

  


The summons he receives from the queen after the feast is the most direct she’s dared give since arriving at Winterfell, and brokers no room for argument. _Your queen requires you in her chambers, come at once_. So he does, grimacing to himself as he goes, even if it's another’s chambers that he truly wants to visit. He glares at her Dothraki guards as they look him up and down, stalking through her doors once they move aside. The queen is draped across her bed wearing her gauzy silks that feel light as air to the touch, impractical for the harsh winter winds. She smells of spiced oils and southern wildflowers, out of place in the north among the sweet tang of pine needles and sap. The scent memory of juniper clinging to soft red waves rises unbidden to Jon, and he banishes it from his thoughts. She has waited for him like this almost every night since their arrival, Jon knows, but everytime he’s summoned he sees Sansa’s eyes watching. He could not bring himself to go to her. She wants his comfort now, in the aftermath of the battle they both endured, of what they both have lost. The horrors should bond them closer, but he cannot find it within himself to comfort her when she wants to sell Sansa for her crown.

“Sansa will not marry unless she wishes.” He says coldly, and Daenerys’ expectant smile dies as he makes no move toward her bed.

“Women marry for alliances. This is our world, _zokla_ . You know it, I know it, and your _sister_  knows it. She is a dutiful girl, she’s already agreed.” He winces at the emphasis placed on  _sister_.

“Of course she’s agreed, she puts her people before everything.” The queen’s eyes are growing dangerously bright.

“I believe you’re referring to _my_ people, my love. This match will serve the realm, as well as your sister.”

“She has been through enough, everyone knows the hurt her marriages wrought.” Jon knows that Varys has whispered in her ear tales of the silvery web of scars dappling Sansa’s back, the faint tracing of a name on her inner thigh like a brand, mottled bruises that have faded from sight alone. He closes his eyes, nausea rising at the memory of cleaning the freshest of the wounds himself, his chambers at Castle Black brimming with tense silence cloaking shame and shared rage.

“I am not a cruel woman. I will not bind her to another Ramsay.” Jon hears the terrible noise that rises from him at the mention of the dead man’s name, and so does she. “It is admirable, how much you care for your sister. How close to your heart you keep her interests.”

She speaks lightly, but Jon can hear the undercurrent of warning. _Do not cross me, do not betray me. I am the Dragon, and you will burn._ She stands and slowly makes her way to him, bringing a hand to cup the side of his face and trailing the other down his chest.

“Enough talk of your sister,” she whispers, tendrils of heat creeping into her voice, lapping hungrily at his skin, “I have waited too long.” He lets her kiss him for a moment while standing still as stone. He once thought her fire pleasant, welcomed it to his breast to flush the northern chill from his body where it still clung around the gatherings of his bones. Her fire is not pleasant now, a demanding and unrelenting wall of heat threatening to scorch and blister all it encounters. He lets her kiss him for a moment, but lurking under the simmering heat is the tremble of Sansa’s hands. He pushes her back gently but firmly.

“She will not marry.” Jon repeats, and he turns on the stones to stride out of her chambers without begging her leave. His steps should take him to his own bed but instead he finds himself walking the familiar path to the Lord’s chambers. He hesitates at her threshold before noticing the heavy oaken door is ajar, and through the sluice of light from the fire he can hear Ghost panting. He pushes hesitantly into the room, not wanting to disturb the stillness wrapping around the walls like a shroud. She’s standing at the windowsill wrapped in a dressing gown with Ghost curled protectively around her feet, outlined in moonlit silver against the deep sky and turns, startled, when he calls her name. 

Jon wants to reassure her that he’s spoken to the queen, that she needn’t marry if she doesn’t want and that he will always put her interests first, but the words catch behind his teeth because Sansa is crying. She’s put aside the smooth face of the Lady of Winterfell, and as she stands there in the window with tears pooling in her eyes and gliding like pearls down her cheeks she looks like years younger.  He looks down at dented armor crusted with dried blood by her hearth and sees the steel-wrought Kraken. He crosses the room in three long strides and carefully pulls her into the circle of his arms.

The only other time in recent memory that Jon has seen Sansa cry was that terrible night at Castle Black, when she slowly peeled back the layers of herself and recounted to Jon what Joffrey had done, what Littlefinger had done, what Ramsay had done. It took hours to untangle the story as her breath hitched and tears dripped down her face. She could barely look him in the eye, shame coloring her voice, and every word twisted Jon’s stomach like the knot of a rope although he took care not to let her see his horror.

She buries her face in the crook of his neck and silently shakes against him. He doesn’t know how much time ticks by, but Jon strokes her hair and whispers whatever words of comfort he can muster. Eventually she pulls away and turns back to the window, and he can see the sheen of tear drops on her silk collar.

“Would you stay awhile, Jon? The ghosts are too restless tonight to weather my dreams alone.” Sansa’s voice is even but he can hear the tinge of fear, the fear that he will rebuff her and leave her again, and he feels a too-familiar guilt bloom in his chest. Even so he has to refuse, to offer to fetch Brienne in his place. He wants to tell her that to stay would be to invite whispers and dishonor, but she turns back to him and the words die in his throat.

He kicks off his boots and sheds his thick leather coverings before slipping into her bed after her. Jon means to keep a respectful distance between the two of them but Sansa shifts towards him. Her hands fist in his shirt and he slowly twirls a thick silken wave of hair around his finger. He can feel the tension in the long lines of her muscles. This is the fear she does not let them see, the doubt and the terror that she holds inside of herself.

They don’t talk for a long while, and in the silence and the stillness surrounding their warm huddle of furs it is easy to pretend that they’re the only two people in the world. How different things might be if Daenerys Targaryen did not stalk their castle’s corridors, if the Night King had not marched south with Death itself, if Jon and Sansa did not wear their ghosts as they would clothes on their backs.

 

“Do you think it will ever stop? The fighting?” She whispers, as though the thought is too terrifying to be spoken with a full voice.

“I hope so.” He whispers back, lips brushing the silken crown of her head. Her skull is delicate under his fingertips as he traces it lightly, mapping every curve and swell of bone as if to commit this small morsel of stolen intimacy to memory. It is almost overwhelming to be this close to her, even separated by layers of cloth the heat of her body feels like it’s searing his skin. In the morning he will be left with her fingerprints burned onto his torso, glowing like the embers in her hearth. Her brand will smolder on his skin long after their watch has ended. 

“One day, dearest, men will lose their hunger for blood and we will no longer have to send our sons to die for a high lord’s whim.”

“Where will you go?” He knows she’s asking of Daenerys, asking without asking if he’ll be by her side in the capital. The idea turns his stomach.

For a moment Jon sees the world Dany wants the two of them to share. He sees her, jewel-eyed and resplendent, perched on the twisted metal of the Iron Throne, ashes falling over the crumbled ruins of the Red Keep. Jon can hear the people’s wailing even as he lays safe in Sansa’s bed. No. He will not be the queen’s puppet consort.

“Where will _we_ go?” He feels her smile against his chest at the familiar answer.

“Very well, where will _we_ go?”

“Anywhere and everywhere, sweetling.”

They fall asleep under the heavy furs, kind dreams coming easier to the both of them than they had in recent memory.

He wakes with her head on his chest and one of her thighs nudged over his as the airy dawn creeps inch by inch over their bodies. She wakes as he rouses. He waits for the shame, hot and thick, to build up between them brick by brick. But after a moment all there is is the stream of sunlight cutting across the two of them. The air is clear. Her smile is bright as the dawn and he finds his fingers acting of their own accord to shift a strand of jeweled hair behind her ear.

“Best I go before the servants realize I did not sleep in my own bed.” He murmurs. She hums in agreement even as she nuzzles ever so slightly deeper into his chest. Jon wonders as he leaves if their father is watching them, if he’s relieved his living children are all together, if he’s sick at the sight of Jon sharing his daughter's bed. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A girl doesn’t need doesn’t need another’s face to slink and slip through the castle unnoticed. She watches, she listens, she learns.

ARYA

Arya is no longer the girl she was when she first left Winterfell. She sees more clearly, understands people more deeply. She and Sansa clashed and tangled together like shadowcats upon her return, but as she is no longer the Arya she once was, Sansa is someone new as well. Just as Arya has suffered, Sansa has suffered wounds that cut just as deep. There were moments when her sister was so unknowable that Arya thought they could fit entire cities, oceans, continents, between them. They bickered, they distrusted one another, they kept secrets that would help breach the gap. Littlefinger’s death eased some of the discord, but Arya still couldn’t seem to find the right way back to her sister.

When Arya demands why Sansa took the Lord’s chambers in place of Jon, she sees Sansa’s mask slip. Fear, guttural and primal, blooms in her eyes for just the span of a heartbeat but dread builds in Arya’s belly. She turns to the window but Arya can still see her hands tremble like leaves as they skitter across sill.

“Things have happened to me here, in our home,” Sansa says slowly, “and Jon gave me these rooms because they make me feel safe.” There is an undercurrent to her voice, an echo of loss and quiet fury that drives Arya to the windowsill. She takes Sansa’s hand.

“You will always be safe, as long as I am with you.” She swears. She can hear Sansa’s breath catch in her throat, but her hand tightening around Arya’s speaks her gratitude.

It becomes easier after that, with the two working as one. She comes to understand that Sansa wears her own sort of armor, just as Arya wields Needle to keep herself safe. Winterfell opens to her again as she relearns its hidden corners and secret paths. It is almost perfect, she and her sister and brother come together again. She closes her eyes and pretends that Bran is truly Bran, that Sansa is not covered head to toe in spidery scars, that she has her mother and father and direwolf surrounding her. A bittersweet comfort brimming with shadows and ghosts.

This comfort shatters like glass when Jon’s raven comes, telling of bent knees and a queen’s army. Sansa brings the Northern lords to heel, swearing his loyalty to them and the North, but in private she rages. Arya can see through her rage. She fears for the North, for the realm, but she also fears for Jon and for herself. 

Arya remembers how distant the two were when they were all young and still innocent. Jon didn’t call her little sister as he did Arya, and Sansa didn’t dote on him the way she did Robb. But even before seeing them together Arya can tell something has shifted. There is a bond, forged through shared suffering and shared triumph. There is affection, respect between siblings. But there is something else, something that shouldn’t fit in the space between brother and sister, but it grows there nonetheless.

 

Arya doesn’t present herself when Jon first comes triumphantly home with two dragons and a conqueror’s army. It’s an alliance which should be seen as a victory for the North, for the living, but instead the northern lords mutter that he came home smelling of the spices and silks of the South. (When she later throws herself into his arms she inhales the scent of him, woodsmoke and clean snowfall. Northern with every breath.) She watches, hidden, as Sansa surveils the small Targaryen woman in front of her. Her face is as smooth as calm water but Arya can see the anger that ripples underneath.

“Winterfell is yours, your Grace.” _You do not belong, how dare you come take what’s mine._

 

“Sansa likes to think she’s smarter than everyone else.” Jon tries to smile at her, to bring back the comfort between them he himself had dispelled. Arya studies him for a moment, and under her scrutiny he shifts uneasily. There is something in his tone she does not like, something she cannot name. 

“She’s the smartest person I know.” Her words are not meant to rebuke but she can see the shame in his eyes, because he knows as well as she their sister’s worth. But perhaps his loyalties have shifted, for after all this is not the brother she left behind and perhaps he traded his Northern honor for what lies between the dragon queen’s legs. Even as the thought grows ugly in her mind she can see the quiet warning in his eyes. _No_ , she thinks, _Jon is still Jon. Honorable to the last breath_. There is something she does not know. Yet. 

 

A girl doesn’t need doesn’t need another’s face to slink and slip through the castle unnoticed. She watches, she listens, she learns.

She sees the child Sansa was in the little moments when lords are not begging the ear of the Lady of Winterfell. Brushing Ghost’s coat, their evenings in her solar, a murmured jape at supper from Jon. A small moment, only lasting from one heartbeat to the next, and there she is, radiant child of the sun, the shining daughter for whom the bells tolled dawn to dusk. 

Arya used to think that her sister was destined for a beautiful life with a beautiful lord, to live among lush gardens and lilting songs with herds of copper-haired children running underfoot. But it is when she comes to know Sansa again that Arya understands how deeply the North sits in her sister, how she spins their chilled world with nothing but kind smiles and careful words. Stark strength shines through Tully blue and underneath Sansa is hardened steel. In life Robb and their parents had never been able to refuse her a thing, and now neither can their lords. 

It’s only Daenerys Targaryen who does not have the sense to love her, who thought she could twist Sansa as a skein of silk around her finger with hollow words and pretty smiles. She is formidable, it is true, with all the beauty and grace expected of women coupled with all of the power they’re never allowed. But the queen does not have a mind for politics. Sansa’s layered words and diplomacy fall upon deaf ears. 

 

Jon is not as good at pretending as Sansa is. Arya watches him and the queen in the moments they think are theirs alone. She watches her brother follow stiff-backed several steps behind her, deference rolling off of his shoulders. He makes himself small in a way that Arya knows grates against every instinct. Jon is no longer one to stand with hunched shoulders and clasped hands like a servant, no longer the bastard boy hidden amongst the crowds of the Great Hall. Perhaps he has learned something from Sansa after all. The queen is not concerned with discretion, orbiting him like a small silver moon, adoration coating every word and gaze. 

 

Arya doesn’t care for feasts, but there’s much to be seen when people are deep in their cups. Wine loosens their lips and Arya gobbles up every small morsel they offer. 

Sansa hadn’t wanted a feast, their stores are too low and everyone privately agreed it was frivolous. But the dragon queen insisted, so here they all sat, toasting and eating as if surrounded by an abundant and everlasting summer.

Arya has to hide a smirk when the queen pushes Jon to dance, knowing from experience that her brother’s grace on the battlefield does not extend to courtly dancing. The high lords and ladies watch quietly as they move, precisely and restrained, around the hall. It is a proper dance, with the appropriate space between their bodies and hands placed exactly where they should be. Jon bows to her after the final step, returning to the high table with relief plain on his face as the onlookers clap politely. 

“That’s the one thing I miss most about Mother and Father’s feasts,” she hears Sansa murmur. “I always loved the dancing. Robb would spin me ‘round and ‘round until I could barely breathe.” Arya feels the familiar ache, remembering how Father would place her up on the tops of his feet to whisk her through the dances. 

“Would you like to dance, Sansa?” They both start at Jon’s soft question.

“You don’t like to dance.” She protested, but Arya knew Jon could see the longing in her eyes as well as her.

“You do.” He said simply, standing and holding a hand out. Sansa takes it with a shy smile on her face and follows him as they weave through the tables. Jon pauses to whisper to the musicians, and when they stand ready the music starts. 

It’s not court music, it’s something new. It’s fast and wild and although Sansa does not know the steps Jon whisks her along securely in his arms. Arya can hear Sansa’s laughter spill out, bright as sunshine, as the two of them whirl across the stone floor, her brilliant hair fanning out like a living flame. As the melody plays, the Free Folk jump up to join in. It must be their music, Arya realizes, unrestrained and joyful in a way that courtly Southern dances could never be. The music and their dance is a spell, glazed eyes follow them as they spin and laugh, all entranced. 

There is no appropriate space between their two bodies, and Arya can see the queen’s eyes narrow at the loose placement of Jon’s hands. Her bright head is bent to his dark one, and she’s clinging to him as if she never wanted to let go. The song eventually comes to an end and they stand there smiling broadly at each other for a moment, rosy-cheeked and breathless with laughter.

 

As the feast nears its end Jon has fallen deep into his cups, and Arya can see Sansa watching him warily.

“Best get him out of here before he says something stupid.” Arya mutters under her breath. Sansa gives her a brief nod before begging the queen’s leave to escort her dear drunk brother to his bed. Sansa and Jon’s departure sparks a tide of guests flowing from the hall without Danaerys’s permission. Arya can see anger and uncertainty at war on her face, but in the end she settles for stalking out of the hall to her own bed, without John and without proper honors.

 

As she heads for her own chambers, she sees the two of them ahead, a staggering Jon supported by Sansa. Ducking behind a corner, she watches them nearly crash through the door to Sansa’s chambers. Sansa’s, not Jon’s. Arya slips like a ghost to the door and twitches it open a crack.  Jon has collapsed, spread-eagle and loose-limbed across Sansa’s furs. Her sister’s lips are twitching into a smile despite herself and she settles gracefully next to him on the bed, leaning over to make sure he’s conscious.

“S’not supposed to hurt to look at ye” he slurred. Arya could see her sister’s spine go rigid through the crack in the door of her room.

“What does that mean?” Sansa’s tone is carefully blank, and if he were sober Jon would realize he was treading over dangerous grounds, but he’s too deep in his cups to see the way she retreats into herself.

“Lookin’ at ye. Hurts. Bright as the sun, ye are.” his voice is a mumble, his accent thickened. “Ye look a perfect lady, too perfect for the likes o’ me or the Imp or the Hound to touch.”

“Jon -” Arya is grimacing to herself and silently urging him to fall into a drunken sleep before he can say any more. _Stupid, stupid idiot._

“The scars tho’, that's what hurts to look at most.” Arya tenses as she can almost feel the strangled gasp that comes from her sister’s chest echoed in her own. She’s waiting for Sansa to get up and stalk out of the room, but something in her deflates. Her shoulders slump downwards and she can’t seem to look at Jon. 

“Yes, they are a horror. I know. I know they’re ugly to look upon, but-” Her words are cut off as Jon sits up fast enough to almost knock their heads together. He grasps her by the shoulders and clumsily forces her chin up.

“No, they’re not ugly.”

“Jon -”

“Sansa. They are a part o’ ye, and no part o’ ye could ever be ugly.”

“Then why?” He pulls back slightly and frowns down at his hands. 

“Because they remind me o’ all the ways I failed ye, and this family.” 

Sansa and him murmur together for a few moments as she tells him of all the ways he’s protected her, protected their family. Arya starts to feel uncomfortable with the sudden swath of intimacy that surrounds the two of them, thick as the furs on Sansa’s bed. He pulls both of her hands to his mouth to kiss her knuckles, his lips seeming to linger longer than they should, and as he raises his head she gently lifts him to his feet.

“Come, you are far too deep in your cups to walk back alone, let me accompany you.” He shakes his head with a whine like a kicked pup as he slumps back down to her bed.

“I’m stayin’ here. Can’t have the dragon queen see me leavin’ your chambers this late.” Sansa makes an impatient noise and bids him again to go with her. He looks up at her mournfully.

“Don’t ye want me here?” Sansa, with her mouth slightly agape, doesn’t seem to know how to respond. “S’not like it would be the first time.” Bright flush spreads across their sister’s cheeks like paint smudges as she quietly relents. Arya starts to slip away as Sansa tucks Jon into her (their?) bed. _It’s not like it would be the first time_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi I'm sorry it's been a while since I updated this story, I got distracted by another one that I'm working on! (If any of you watch Peaky Blinders I would love for you to check it out!!)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is super short and I'm sorry about that - life is crazy right now but I just wanted to get something up for you guys! Let me know what you think :)

JON

Sansa is the second person Jon tells after Sam takes his entire world in his hands and shatters it to pieces against the stone of the crypt. She finds him kneeling in front of Lyanna Stark’s statue, trying to find his likeness in the cold curves of her stone face. He doesn’t look up but he hears her skirts rustle as she settles beside him. Her hand is steady as a heartbeat on his shoulder as he slowly bares himself to her, his newfound shame and fear and disgust. Several agonizingly slow seconds pass before she speaks.

“You will always be our family, Jon. No matter what names they give you, no matter who they decide you to be. You are my brother.” Her voice is careful, but Jon is weary of being careful. They have been careful with each other for far too long, moons of soft touches and delicate words as if anything with more weight would shatter their pretense like glass.

“Do you want me to be your brother, Sansa?” He asks softly, eyes trained on his mother’s likeness. He hears her sharp intake of breath and something in the air changes. It is tangible as woodsmoke, curling and spinning through the air between their bodies as it takes on a life all its own. Suddenly he can feel her heartbeat as clearly as his own, quickening in their chests, the leap and stutter of fear along with something else, a deep and nameless want. 

“I do not know myself anymore.”Jon looks up at her and his breath catches behind his teeth, for it is not Sansa staring back at him but a trembling red wolf, dark-eyed and hungering, muscles tensed to leap. He thinks of bearing his throat to her and his breath runs ragged.

Jon feels her gently take his arms and lift him to his feet, his fingers winding around her wrists of their own accord. 

“Mine, that is what you are. You are mine. A Stark for all your days. I will cut down any man, lion, or queen who dares to say otherwise.” Her whisper comes hot and fierce, a vow cutting through scarred skin and bone right to his core. A small sliver of hope starts to burn bright and warm in the crook of his ribs, stealing his breath. He can feel it now, the pull of her, the crushing gravity dragging him forward across the stone, every nerve in his body screaming out to her.

He desperately drinks in the promise in her eyes. They’re standing close enough that the curtain of her hair gleaming in the firelight brushes his arms as they lean towards each other. He thinks, distantly, that he should let go of her. Even with the affection thick as blood between them Sansa still sometimes flinches away from contact that brings skin to skin. He wills his fingers to draw back but they refuse to even twitch. He does not let go, and neither does Sansa, until they hear voices approaching the crypt and they wrench apart as if burned. 

 

He finds her in the godswood later that night, perched by the ink black pool where their father always sat in solemn contemplation. He treads forward, boots crunching the thick frost on the grass. The godswood looks different under the light of the stars, shadowy and deep, a place where gods and men might come together in a way made impossible by the light of day. The swaying white boughs of the weirwood tree curve around her like the wings of a great throne, the godswood her chilled court. 

Sitting by the pool she could be one of the old gods slipped amongst them, a wild and unearthly being come down to slip and settle into the small spaces between his bones and crack him wide. Her eyes flash like silver in the moonlight and her hair is unbraided and loose over her shoulders. Jon thinks to himself that she doesn’t look like a northerner or a southerner. She is something more. For a moment neither of them says anything, and the only noise is the wind whistling through the gnarled branches of the weirwood.

“Am I interrupting your prayers?” She almost seems to start at his voice.

“I don’t pray much anymore.” His face must betray his surprise, because she continues with the shadow of a smile. “We are Starks, we kept the old gods. We prayed and sacrificed and honored, we were theirs. We were theirs to protect, and look at us now.” He lets the silence fall easy between them again for another beat.

“Did you mean it?” He asks gruffly. She doesn’t need to ask what he means. Sansa looks him dead in the eyes, silver meeting grey, and stands.

“Of course I did.” He might have started to say something else, but his words are swallowed up as she twists her hands in the front of his cloak and drags his lips to hers.

For a moment his vision flashes silver as her lips move silk-soft against his. At first it’s gentle, almost chaste, and then Sansa whimpers against him and Jon surges forward. He winds his fingers through the thick tumble of her hair, unable to pull her close enough to satisfy the want rising in his belly. The smell and touch and taste of her is intoxicating, warm and sweet and familiar. Flint and steel crashing together to spark against the intertwine of veins and sinew and skin. A primal heat is screaming through his limbs and he can’t quite grasp her tightly enough to quiet it. Her breath is ragged when she finally pulls away, and for a moment Jon thinks he must have gone too far. He’s about to apologize when she presses her forehead against his in silent promise.

“I don’t want you to be my brother, Jon.” She breathes. Jon shudders as her words ghost over his cheek.

“I will be whoever you wish me to be,” Jon swears, “as long as I am always your family.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO SORRY THAT IT'S BEEN SO LONG!! I got sidetracked by another fic but I'm so happy to be back working on this one.

With the threat of the Night King no longer curling around their necks like the rough scrape of the hangman’s noose, the queen grows impatient. Something inside of her was knocked loose long ago, and it rattles around in her belly unable to settle back down, restlessness written onto her body. She hungers for her throne and reminds them daily of the debt she’s owed, the one forged in dragonfire and the shrill wails of the dead. It lives behind her eyes like a second heartbeat, gleaming in the lights of the castle’s hearths. Their people sense the shift, soldiers hobbling out of the infirmary with wounds still jagged and weeping around the edges grow pale in the Hall when Daenerys toasts to their coming victory. Through his own dread, Jon marvels at the way Sansa reigns in her anger, holds it in check like an unruly horse, straining at the bit. He knows only he, Arya, and Bran can see below the calm mask of the Lady of Winterfell, see the fury that bubbles and roils underneath. 

 

They steal away seconds and minutes and hours in her solar, gentle warmth of the fire lapping at the stone walls, her hair a splash of crimson against the bruised violet sky. He watches her sew, slender fingers dancing over wool and thread, stitching the dress as she does the North, fabric to fabric and house to house. The steady ebb and flow of her breath is the beat of his lifeblood in his chest, spreading a heavy sense of calm through his body. He wants to drown in this moment, breathe it in to fill his lungs until they burst from the bliss of it.

Jon hears a quiet curse break into the still air, and looks over to see blood, ruby red and slick, beading at the tapered point of Sansa’s finger. He takes her hand in his and raises her pale skin to his lips to lick her fingertip clean. Her blood is hot and salty on his tongue and when he lifts his head flush is spreading across the proud tilt of her cheekbones, her eyes fractured and wide as he hears the pattern of her breathing come undone. The rush of hunger is strong enough to nearly lift him from where he sits, crouched and tensed to spring, but Arya is wheeling Bran’s creaky chair through the solar door, so he drops her hand like it burned him.

 

 He holds himself down into his seat, ancient rosewood creaking in protest and threatening to splinter under his white-knuckled grip, until the door closes behind Arya with a gentle and final creak, and suddenly the layers of Sansa’s armor cover the floor, leaving her bare as her name day. Jon will later recall these moments as brilliant storms of color - pale white skin against the sheets, scarlet hair spreading over the pillows like the splash of blood from her forefinger, blue eyes cracking open like winking jewels as they drink him in, small pools of sea water in her darkened chamber. The heat of her is dizzying, as if the sun itself burns bright under his palms, soft and whimpering and eager under his hands. How could they call her cold, she who curls around him like skeins of her silken threads around the forefinger? Nothing in the world had ever tasted so sweet on Jon’s tongue. And from the time between the setting of the sun and when it crests over the distant hills, bringing the pale and brilliant dawn, they pretend another war does not creep steadily closer.

 

He tries to reason with Daenerys. He tries cool logic, raging anger, even pleading nearly on his knees, appealing to the part of her he knows loves him. It’s not enough, the hunger for blood coats her tongue, hangs in the air with her words when she makes her speeches. The hall starts to smell of that hunger rather than snow and woodsmoke, raises the hairs on the backs of their necks, wolves scenting danger in the air. It grips her like a vice, squeezing and squeezing until nothing but her need for the throne remains. 

 

Sansa sees them off, and Jon knows only he can see the tremble in her hands. Their embrace is fleeting and proper, the barest brush of his lips to the silken crown of her head. And then it’s his time to leave but his feet are rooted in the soil, legs unwilling to move even a pace away from her. Time seems to slow to the barest trickle, seconds stretching into hours into years, and they stare and stare and stare at each other as they break apart. He longs to carry her off, throw her onto his horse and take her away, far away from the madness blooming in the queen’s eyes. The small space between their bodies becomes a living thing, rippling with sadness and wanting and a thousand things unsaid, but Daenerys calls after him, and Jon forces himself to turn his back, every step from her side ripping through his body.

He looks back as the army marches through the gates to see her watching from the ramparts, red hair blowing like a waving flag in the wind. That’s how he’ll remember her - steel-spined and steady under the weight of all of their people’s hurts. He turns back again and again, long after Winterfell has sunk beneath the roll of the hills. 

It’s that picture he thinks of as he cuts down the Lannister men, the Golden Company men, his own men as they turn to feral animals in the city streets. He slashes and stabs and parries, aiming not for the men clawing for life before him but his own shame, hot and thick and crowding the streets. He sees her looking down, wind-blown hair a fiery halo around her head, watching as he strains and heaves his way through, and he holds that picture in his mind so that he won’t see the charred and twisted bodies lining the streets, frozen in their final moments. They claw at the walls, cling to each other, tuck themselves behind barrels and doors and carts. But the fire found them anyway. So he pictures her instead.

 

When Jon stumbles into the throneroom, the soles of his boots slipping over the white ash coating the floor, he finds Danaerys as she used to be. Bright-eyed and hopeful, earnest, wanting to build a better world. Wanting to break the wheel. In that moment he could see how so many followed her, how so many loved her. He could have loved her. She looks so very young right then that something in his chest fractures, splinters and falls away, the part of him that longed for her kinship. But then the memory of the bodies swells up in his throat, choking out any doubt or wavering resolve. So he pictures Sansa instead, lets her crowd his vision until no bodies or queens or dragons remained. 

It’s Sansa in his eyes as he slips the blade between Daenerys’s ribs, and it’s Sansa he prays to as the life fades from the queen’s eyes.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> only a few more chapters to go!!

 

“And why should we not punish him, the traitor who butchered his queen?”

“Because he is mine.” She’d been holding the words behind her tongue so long Sansa thought they would burn through her throat. They burst from her mouth, fierce and jagged with teeth of their own, falling in the silence like stones in still water. Sansa hears the uncomfortable clearing of throats and sees their cast-down eyes, but she can’t bring herself to care. Let them wonder, let them whisper.

“Jon Snow is a Northern subject.” Sansa wills her voice to be chilled as the northern seas, hardened as the edge of John’s blade. She must be strong for him, for her pack. She will be steel. She’ll cut them all down where they sit as they squabble about allegiances and vows and kingdoms. Sansa looks into their faces, they who plot and fight and rule. She thinks them small.

“Your Grace -” Tyrion starts, and she hears the pity and fondness and regret layered in his voice as he starts to tell her she cannot have what’s hers.

“Forget these stories of kings and queens and doomed love,” Sansa continues evenly, casting a hard look over the faces turned toward her, “forget our tangled loyalties and tangled bloodlines.” She looks to Tyrion, world-weary and shrunken by more years than he’d lived, and sees him flinch at the bite of ice in her eyes.

“The lords and ladies who have come to sit in judgment on this day may try to tell me that I cannot have what is mine. But I will not hear a single word of it from you, Tyrion Lannister. Your family kept me shut in their gilded cage. Your sister kept me curled in her golden paw. I was beaten, I was shamed, I was used.” Tyrion’s eyes are pleading with her from where he’s near-weighted down by his chains, but Sansa can’t find it within herself to scrape the last drops of pity from her body to grace him with. Every word from her lips seems to shrink him lower and lower. “Jon Snow is mine, because it is my right as his sovereign. Jon Snow is mine, because it is my will.” 

She turns to Grey Worm. His eyes are shuttered, mouth pulled down like a slash across his face.

“You knew what she was. You called her _mhysa_ , but she wasn’t, was she?” The frown deepens. “Jon broke no vows, because he swore no vows. The queen heard what she wished. There is nothing for you here. Take your freedom, take your lives. Leave Jon Snow to me.”

 

When they bring Jon to her, half-dead and limp supported between two soldiers, Sansa eagerly drinks in every bit of him. His face is sunken below his cheekbones and his eyes are ringed in bruised exhaustion, but he is whole. He is alive. She wants to smooth the weariness from his brow, knit him back together with her own hands. Even as she notes every bruise and scrape and cut, a feeling of dread starts to creep under Sansa’s skin. The hurts plaguing him the most are the ones she can’t see. Faces behind his eyes, broken vows under his tongue. Their eyes meet and it’s as if a flame sparks to life in her chest, warm and crackling and alive.

“Forgive me?” She breathes, and for a horrible brief moment she thinks he won’t. Jon’s face is smooth and blank as a looking glass and all she sees is her own fear staring back at her. But then a smile that looks like it was dredged up from the very bottom of himself with heaving effort twitches at the corners of his lips. Something hard and painful that she hadn’t even realized she was carrying unspools in Sansa’s belly. She forgets herself, forgets the soldiers, forgets the lords and ladies watching them with distant eyes. She throws herself against him with enough force to knock the breath from their chests in twin gasps, and although he sways back he stays upright, spine straight and strong as the trunk of a pine. His arms wind around her, forearms circling ribs and his fingers splaying over her back like she was molded to fit beneath his hands. His name beats within her like a second heartbeat. _Jon, Jon, Jon_.

 

She stands on the dock and watches as the Unsullied sail off, only allowing the tension held tight in her shoulders to drain away when the very tip of the masts dip under the horizon. Arya slips up behind her, and for a while they stand there, hand in hand, watching the soft swell of waves rising up to lick at the sky.

“Are you coming home, sister?” Arya hesitates at Sansa’s query, eyes downcast, and although guilt sweeps over her face like the bruise of a storm cloud rolling across the sky Sansa can see the yearning underneath. Her sister had wanting of her own. “Will you follow him?” Sansa asks, words small and quiet against the endless expanse of sea and sky. It was almost daunting, a world in front of them so large it seemed as if it could gobble them up.

“I’ll follow him anywhere and everywhere.” Arya says softly. Sansa blows out a slow breath, nodding to herself.  

“When you tire of storms, your pack will be waiting.” A smile steals over her sister’s face, sharp and dangerous and gleaming. A feral flash of teeth.

“I shall never tire of storms and stags, but my pack will see me again before the year is gone.”

 

Sansa’s soul feels lighter with every second that takes them further from the ruins of King’s Landing. She had bid Jon to ride alongside her, thinking the fresh air would breathe life back into his ragged body, but even astride his horse and free of the smell of charred bodies Jon is somewhere deep inside of himself, somewhere she can’t reach. Sansa can see the ghost of the queen hovering about him like mist, hunching his shoulders and stoking the guilt swimming in his eyes. 

In the long hours of their journey she tries to coax a smile from him, but he only nods at her words and keeps his eyes cast downward, as if the sorrow in them is too heavy to lift. He disappears with the sun every evening, roaming the nearby woods alone, leaving Sansa to wonder and worry and wring her hands. The first night he disappeared she sent Brienne and Jamie chasing into the dark after him, only to receive them back empty-handed. He returned on his own at the break of dawn, refusing to say where he’d been or why he’d gone. He’d done the same every night since. 

As they draw nearer and nearer to Winterfell, Sansa dares to hope that with the cold stone of their home stacking around them like armor Jon might come back to himself, come back to her. But then the ramparts break over the bleak horizon, and instead of joy in his face Sansa only finds more sorrow. She longs to pluck it from where it sits, glistening in the coal black of his eyes.

They ride through the gates, and for the first time in what feels like lifetimes, Sansa feels safe.


End file.
